What was up with Fox News excluding Ron Paul from Sunday’s Republican debate? Jay Leno puzzles over the network’s decision, and Paul posits some answers: He’s a “strict constitutionalist” and anti-Iraq war. Leno points out that Paul’s a “Republican.” But as for Fox News higher-ups, the Texas politician responds, “They’re not.”

This is certainly a point that has been made before, but the Guardian’s Michael Tomasky performed his own journalistic audit on the U.S.‘s Fox News network, starting with the conservative channel’s overt claims of offering “fair and balanced” news coverage, and finds that it falls short of its mission statement about spin-free reporting.

Bill O’Reilly—or rather, a couple of his employees—took the opportunity to descend upon Rosie O’Donnell at her recent book signing in Huntington, N.Y., and corner her about her supposed belief (which she says O’Reilly incorrectly characterized) that 9/11 was an inside job.

Funny how, in the wake of any national disaster these days, news analysts set about explaining the latest disaster according to their pet political interests. Take the recent California wildfires, for example, and watch what Jon Stewart discovers about different stations’ diverse interpretations of what the fires really mean.

The hawks have taken to the Sunday morning air to beat the war drums over Iran, while those who oppose them, including former President Jimmy Carter, try to prevent a disaster worse than Iraq. TPM TV has this roundup.

Perhaps more remarkable than watching Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee trot out the “if you break it, you buy it” analogy in relation to the Iraq war during Wednesday’s debate is taking in Ron Paul’s exasperated speech about how a handful of neocons in Washington “hijacked our foreign policy.”

A group of progressive organizations and blogs is planning to hit Fox News where it hurts: the bank account. MoveOn.org, Brave New Films, DailyKos and others are working to compile a list of local advertisers as part of a larger pressure campaign. Fox News may have brought this on itself by successfully pressuring JetBlue to pull out as a major sponsor of the YearlyKos convention.

Fox News is out to smear the blogosphere with a slew of unsavory tactics, such as comparing liberal bloggers to the Klan and Nazi Germany. It has already met with some success, prompting JetBlue to pull its sponsorship from the YearlyKos convention.

Fox pundit Bill O’Reilly, ever on top of hot-button trends in the zeitgeist, took a goodly chunk of time during Monday night’s episode of “The O’Reilly Factor” to discuss a most pressing national issue—and no, it’s not the glaringly important and timely I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby case.

A high school student from Boulder, Colo., who appeared on “The O’Reilly Factor” to weigh in about a recent assembly at his school that featured frank discussions about sex and drugs successfully dammed the rising tide of outrage coming from Bill O’Reilly by taking a page from the Fox pundit’s own book.

Americans need to catch up with Albanians in terms of showing President Bush some serious love, according to pseudo-pundit Stephen Colbert, who laments that Albanians have renamed a street after our commander in chief and dedicated stamps to him; in fact, he’s so popular over there that “gypsies actually put money in his pockets” during his Albanian love-in.

“The Simpsons” has never shied away from biting the hand that feeds it, but in its 400th episode—heavily promoted by the network—the show went for a two-fer, mocking both the low-brow Fox and the propagandistic Fox News.

The DNC chairman sits down with Stephen Colbert for a raucous discussion on the Republican debate, torture and why the Democrats won’t go on Fox News: “No sense in going on propaganda outlets when you don’t have to.” Other Dean zingers include: “Any Republican debate is torture,” and “John McCain knows something about torture, the rest of the guys were just windbags.”

John Gibson of Fox News attempts to “nail” Michael Moore for his recent trip to Cuba, arguing rather desperately that Moore cannot be considered a journalist because his last movie grossed $100 million and journalists are supposed to be underpaid.

According to the latest Pew Research survey, the most knowledgeable Americans are regular viewers of “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report” and avid newspaper readers. At the other end of the spectrum are viewers of Fox News and morning shows.

Roger Ailes, the mastermind behind Fox News, publicly fumed when the Democratic presidential candidates refused to participate in his network’s debates, but can he really blame Obama, Clinton and Edwards for avoiding a conservative ambush?

Presidential candidate Barack Obama has followed in the footsteps of fellow Democratic hopeful John Edwards in declining to take part in a primary debate co-sponsored by Fox News and the Congressional Black Caucus Institute in September.

Though the Bush administration continues to support Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, another prominent Republican has called for him to step down. One-time House Speaker Newt Gingrich went on “Fox News Sunday” and said Gonzales’ “self-created” mess gets in the way of his job.

The Congressional Black Caucus has agreed to cosponsor two debates with Fox News, one for Democrats and the other for Republicans. But as Robert Greenwald and the folks at Fox Attacks demonstrate in this video, the network has a history of attacking black America.

Jeff Cohen joins Truthdig to talk about life in the big media trenches, why news coverage is only getting worse, and how horse race politics and the corporatization of information are killing American democracy. Cohen was the communications director for the 2004 Dennis Kucinich campaign, founder of Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting, and author most recently of “Cable News Confidential” (excerpted here).

Our collection of favorite videos this week includes Sen. Chuck Schumer nailing the Bush administration on the firing of U.S. attorneys, the Discovery Channel drooling over a weapon that kills Americans, and “The Simpsons” dressing down Fox News.

“The Simpsons” has never shied away from biting the hand that feeds it. In this classic clip, the show eviscerates Fox News in what may be the greatest ever indictment of the network. It’s worth watching multiple times just to take in the “crawl.”

Liberal bloggers had gone crazy when they heard the Nevada Democratic Party had agreed to co-sponsor a debate with Fox News. On Friday the event was canceled after a series of developments. Barack Obama was freezing out Fox reporters, John Edwards and Bill Richardson announced they wouldn’t participate in the debate and, finally, Fox President Roger Ailes (above) brought the whole thing crashing down with a botched bad joke.

Stephen Colbert says goodbye to an American icon, who began his career fighting the Nazis and would go on to capture the cultural temperature for decades. Plus, don’t miss Fox News’ reaction: “You should not kill Captain America when we’re at war.”

Documentarian Robert Greenwald (“Outfoxed,” “Iraq for Sale”) joins regular panelists James Harris and Joshua Scheer to talk about Fox News’ latest shenanigans, his effort to create an online Iraq war memorial and more.

Documentarian Robert Greenwald (“Outfoxed,” “Iraq for Sale”) joins regular panelists James Harris and Joshua Scheer to talk about Fox News’ impact on the media, his effort to create an online Iraq war memorial and more.

Documentarian Robert Greenwald has collected some of Fox News’ worst smears against Barack Obama, who sensibly responded to the attacks by freezing out Fox reporters. At the end of the video, Greenwald urges the Nevada Democratic Party, which plans to allow the “fair and balanced” network to host a debate, to do the same.

This week, our selection of Truthdig-flavored videos includes a preview of Fox’s answer to “The Daily Show”; The Dixie Chicks’ Natalie Maines speaking about artistic courage to the ACLU; and Chris Hedges laying a smackdown to Colbert and the Christian right.

Fox News intends to broadcast unaired footage from ABC’s propagandistic miniseries “The Path to 9/11.” The scene in question, which suggested that Sandy Berger rejected a proposal to assassinate Osama bin Laden, was toned down after the series’ wild inaccuracies and political motivations led to a national firestorm.

The folks at Fox News, always innovative in the ways of fairness and balance, do some of their most inflammatory work on the banners that hover at the bottom of the screen. Not to rest at mislabeling party affiliation, they’ve taken to editorializing given names.

One thing we love about Rep. Barney Frank is his total unwillingness to allow an interviewer to step on his answer, misrepresent his argument and then slither away. Neil Cavuto practices the dark arts for Fox News in this particular interview, as Frank steadfastly defends his position on exorbitant CEO pay against an avalanche of nasal smugness.

Conservative radio personality Mike Gallagher appeared on Fox News on Tuesday to vent his anger at “The View” host Joy Behar for comparing Donald Rumsfeld to Hitler. Without a shred of irony, Gallagher then called for the government to round up Behar, Matt Damon and Keith Olbermann and “take the whole bunch of them and put them in a detention camp until this war is over, because they’re a bunch of traitors.”

In what must have been conceived as a self-parody, Bill O’Reilly and other notables from the Fox News circus lambasted Dan Rather for his accusation that the network receives talking points from the White House, and demanded an apology. On various Fox programs, O’Reilly and friends alternated between vehemently denying the claim and struggling with the meaning of balance. O’Reilly: “I basically say, look, we have people like [Kirsten Powers] on. We have Michelle [Malkin] on. This is balanced.”

...weren’t the liberals it attacked but the conservatives who believed it,” writes Nicholas Kristof at the N.Y. Times. “Be very wary of Mr. Bush’s effort to tame the press. Watchdogs can be mean, dumb and obnoxious, but it would be even more dangerous to trade them in for lap dogs.”

It apparently wasn’t the vice president’s sense of duty to the country that precipitated his sit-down interview with Fox News. It was the president, no dummy when it comes to PR, who made Cheney sit down in front of the cameras, according to Time magazine.